The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, May 19, 2017

US President Donald Trump’s situation plummeted sharply in the 24
hours between Wednesday (May 17) and Thursday (May 18).

US President Donald Trump’s situation plummeted sharply in the 24
hours between Wednesday (May 17) and Thursday (May 18). In the five
months since moving into the White House, he has struggled against daily
firestorms ignited by his enemies in the political, media and
intelligence establishments. Thursday morning, he was tossed into the
flames when he learned that the Justice Department had appointed former
FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to “oversee a federal
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, including
potential collusion between the president’s campaign associations and
Russian officials.”

After consistent denials had no effect, Trump’s supporters and staff
initially hoped that the appointment of this respected former spy chief
would finally put a stop to the negative storm besetting his presidency,
and let him get on with the health, tax, economic and other reforms he
had set in motion.

They were wrong, the adverse leaks to the media continued
notwithstanding, and were clearly designed to steer the Mueller probe in
a negative direction.
A gravely troubled president therefore sets out on his first foreign
trip – first stop Riyadh on May 22, followed by Israel on May 23-24, the
Vatican and Brussels a day later. That trip was further shadowed by the
press report Tuesday, May 16, claiming Trump had leaked classified
information from Israeli intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov during his visit to the White House on May 10.

This leak, consistently denied by the White House, was clearly aimed
at sabotaging the president’s plans to crown his visits to Riyadh and
Israel by successful breakthroughs with America’s foremost allies in the
region.

Foreign trips often serve harassed political leaders to escape their
troubles at home and bask in the warm welcomes of friendly nations and
colleagues. But Donald Trump was deprived in advance of this respite by
the slur on his integrity in dealing with highly sensitive security and
intelligence matters that was cast by allegations of betraying
classified information from a foreign partner.
The most pressing topic in the Middle East today is the expansion of the
military-political-intelligence alliance of Russia, Iran and Syria to
include Iraq. (debkafile
revealed Wednesday, May 17 that an Iraqi military delegation had
arrived in Damascus for the first groundbreaking visit in decades).
However the Mueller probe, centering as it does on the president’s
associates’ alleged interaction with Russian officials, ties Trump’s
hands on a vital foreign policy issue: the urgent need for US
cooperation with Russia for resolving the Syrian and other burning
crises afflicting the region.
The impact of Trump’s imposed inaction is already apparent in the
conduct of some of the relevant leaders, such as President Vladimir
Putin, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Egypt’s
Abdul-Fatteh El-Sisi, King Abdullah of Jordan and Iraqi Prime Minister
Haydar al-Abadi.

Each of those leaders plans to make hay from the policy void created
by the Trump administration’s grim situation; each is meanwhile striking
out for alternative partners to lessen their dependence on Washington.

Saudi King Salman and his Defense Minister Deputy Crown Prince
Mohammad Bin Salman are nonetheless carrying on as though nothing is
amiss. Possibly because they refuse to read the signs in Washington,
they are forging ahead with arrangements for an historic summit, with
invitations issued to some 50 Arab and Muslim rulers to meet the
visiting US president in Riyadh.

At his next stop, his Israeli hosts have still not received a
detailed outline of his plans – only the times of his arrival and
departure. The impression gained in Jerusalem is that the White House is
too distracted by the mayhem surrounding the president to carry out its
normal duties.

debkaFileSource: http://debka.com/article/26059/Trump-reaches-Mid-East-trip-under-a-grim-probe Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

How fake news gets made.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, writes about radical Islam and the leftMedia fake news is everywhere.No, the new health care bill does not treat rape as a pre-existing condition and Republicans did not celebrate its passage with beer.The latest media outrage is driven by a Washington Post story about intelligence disclosures based on claims by anonymous sources. The Post’s big hit pieces are mainly based on anonymous sources.Its latest hit piece runs a quote from, “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” That’s an anonymous source quoting hearsay from other anonymous sources.This isn’t journalism. It’s a joke.Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a story based on “the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House.” The fake news story falsely claimed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign.Rod had a simple answer when asked about that piece of fake news. “No.”So much for 30 anonymous sources and for the Washington Post’s credibility. But the media keeps shoveling out pieces based on anonymous sources and confirmed by anonymous sources while ignoring the disavowals by those public officials who are willing to go on the record.The Comey memo story is based on, according to the New York Times, “two people who read the memo.” And then "one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter."And his dog.The supposed memo contradicts Comey’s own testimony to Congress under oath.The Times hasn’t seen the memo. No one has seen the memo except the anonymous sources that may or may not exist. The media’s fake news infrastructure relies heavily on anonymous sources. And anonymous sources are the media’s way of saying, “Just trust us.”The question is why would anyone trust the media?Comey fake news is popular on the left because it is convinced that he is the key to reversing their election defeat. Recently CNN got its fake news fingers burned with a story claiming that the former FBI Director had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation before he was fired.Where did CNN get its story from? Anonymous sources. Or, as the story put it, “two sources familiar with the discussion.”Sources “familiar with the discussion” is up there with “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” And their neighbor’s dog who barks exclusively to CNN.Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe both shot down CNN’s fake news. CNN’s headline was, “New Acting FBI Director Contradicts White House on Comey.” Its fake news was referenced only as, “Amid reports that Comey had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation, McCabe testified that he believed the bureau had adequate resources to complete the job.”CNN did not acknowledge that the fake reports had come from it. It phrased it in passive and vague language. And it left out a crucial part of McCabe’s response. “When we need resources, we make those requests here. So I'm not aware of that request and it's not consistent with my understanding of how we request additional resources. That said, we don't typically request resources for an individual case. And as I mentioned, I strongly believe that the Russian investigation is adequately resourced.”CNN didn’t just push fake news. It covered up its crime. And it’s the cover-up that proves the crime.

Media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post often knows that they’re pushing lies. WaPo’s fact checkers shot down the claim that rape is a pre-existing condition. But the paper ran a piece titled, “I Was Raped. Thanks to Republicans, I Could Be Denied Insurance.” The editors know quite well which of these pieces will have more of an impact.But the Post has a dozen stories mentioning the Comey resources fake news. The Washington Post isn’t in the news business. After its takeover by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, it’s in the business of manufacturing viral Trump hit pieces. It got a viral fake news hit with its lie that Press Secretary Sean Spicer was hiding in the bushes to avoid them. There was an equally snarky correction issued that was largely irrelevant. Having manufactured a piece of fake news fit for a Saturday Night Live skit, the Post then dutifully reported on the Saturday Night Live skit featuring its fake news item.In the past there would have been a world of difference between the Washington Post and Saturday Night Live. Today they are part of the same lefty echo chamber. The media, all the various parts of it, is now one big influence operation. The machine works by developing and taking fake news attacks viral. WaPo and SNL are in the same business. There isn’t even much of a stylistic difference.The Washington Post's "Trump fired Comey because he's taller" could easily have come from Saturday Night Live, The Onion or the Daily Show.The truly damning epitaph of American journalism is that there isn't much of a difference. Saturday Night Live isn’t doing comedy and the Washington Post isn’t doing journalism. They’re both manufacturing viral Trump attacks.Getting your news from the Washington Post is as worthless as getting it from Saturday Night Live.While more respectable papers like the Post and the Times occupy the top rung of the fake news ladder, CNN has become the National Enquirer of Trump bashing. No story is too petty or fake to get airtime or site space. Recent examples that have gone viral include, “Is the President Afraid of Stairs” and “President Gets 2 Scoops of Ice Cream, Everyone Else 1.”CNN’s fake news is constantly being shot down by the facts. But it just doubles down on its lies. “We will not insult your intelligence by pretending it’s legitimate. Nor will we aid and abet the people trying to misinform you," CNN's Don Lemon had blustered when trying to suppress the Rice spying story.CNN insults the intelligence of its viewers every minute that they watch it. It offers up a stream of misinformation while trying to suppress legitimate news. Much of this misinformation takes the form of spreading lefty fake news memes whether it’s rape as a preexisting condition or Republican beer.And even when corrections appear, they exist only for the purpose of plausible deniability. The original fake news gets rolled into multiple news stories, blog posts and editorials that never get updated or corrected.

And even if they were to be, the damage would be done. That’s the way fake news works.CNN and the Washington Post are throwing mud and assuming that some of it will stick. And even when it’s officially corrected, it still sticks around. Months later, the Post site still carries an uncorrected reference to the AP fake news story which claimed that Trump had threatened to invade Mexico even after it had been denied by both governments and had been pulled for being unverifiable.It’s a safe bet that rape as a preexisting condition and Comey’s Russian resources will also stick around.

“Applying the fake news label is an attack on the truth. It’s reckless and corrosive to democracy, and elected officials attempt to deliberately and systematically erode the credibility of news organizations because they object to factually accurate reporting," the CEO of the Washington Post insisted last month.But it’s the media that is reckless and corrosive to democracy. It has eroded its credibility with fake news. Factually accurate reporting has become too difficult and unrewarding. The idea of waiting months or years for an investigation to pay off is alien to the nanosecond news cycle. That’s why every fake Trump scandal is the new Watergate. And fake news is constantly being manufactured.News organizations are throwing away their credibility to reverse the results of a democratic election. And it’s not only their own credibility that they are throwing away. The marketplace of ideas was based on reason and objectivity. Without them, there was no longer a public square we could all live in.Media bias began to corrupt the marketplace. But bias meant the selective reporting of facts. Falsehoods could creep in. But generally the media would not just casually run stories that were completely false. It would happen from time to time. But it wouldn’t be a constant practice.And then a tipping point was reached.Historians of journalism will argue over when the dam broke. Was it the age of Obama or of Trump? But the day arrived. The sun rose over the CNN Center in Atlanta, the K Street digs of the Washington Post and the offices of other media organizations. And it was no longer a question of selective reporting. We were no longer arguing about the injection of opinion into news stories or journalistic double standards.The age of fake news had arrived. We no longer have a free press. All we have is a fake press.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266714/anonymous-sources-washington-post-and-cnn-fake-daniel-greenfield Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The unmasking of American citizens and subsequent leaking of that
information may be a lane Mueller travels. If he does, then the left
will rue the day they sought a special prosecutor.

Yesterday, Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as the special counsel, with full federal attorney powers, in the investigation of Russian interference in the electoral process of 2016. At this point, Mueller has been given unlimited time and the ability to follow any related pathways regarding the scope and breadth of the Russian investigation. But, as anyone familiar with recent history may remember, any special prosecutor may venture down paths not originally contemplated, as Bill Clinton could attest.

For Donald Trump, this deck of cards provides many possible outcomes. Trump, not a seasoned politician, has created many unforced errors during his four months in office. All his accomplishments have received scant coverage by the media (not willing to give him credit) as his tweets, hyperbole, and misstatements have overshadowed his agenda. His private conversation with James Comey, which led to a purported memo partially leaked to the New York Times, was the kind of error that increased the pressure upon Rosenstein to appoint Mueller.

Many Democrats have urged the appointment of a special prosecutor. For those convinced that Trump's election was illegitimate, the only outcome is for Mueller is to find criminality during the private Comey meeting in February, such as obstruction of justice. They seek a bill of particulars coming before Congress to allow impeachment proceedings. Some will still want an independent commission to investigate these issues as a way of keeping the negative news out front.

Leftists are convinced that Michael Flynn committed some serious violation when meeting with Russian officials. They further believe that Trump interfered in the FBI investigation into this activity. With yesterday's new report, they feel that Trump had reason to protect Flynn, since he told the transition team that he was being investigated for activity as a foreign agent prior to his appointment as national security adviser. They complain that Trump took 18 days to fire Flynn despite warnings from acting A.G. Yates that Flynn was compromised.

With the report that Trump gave intelligence information to the Russian officials while the latter were visiting the Oval Office, Trump opponents further feel he is unfit for the office. With this activity and the above issues, it is not clear what laws were broken.

Mueller will likely conduct a thorough but quiet investigation. This may help Trump get his agenda back on track. But it now means legal risk for the entire White House staff and transition personnel. Washington criminal lawyers will likely get new clients. Trump may well decide to seek personal counsel as the White House lawyer represents the office. He should certainly refrain from public and private discussion about these issues. This will help him focus on his agenda.

Republican opponents of the president now see a way to deflect him from his agenda that includes draining the D.C. swamp. The controversy now threatens to swallow Trump and his advisers. The establishment is loath to see any systemic changes. Senators such as McCain can't refrain from nicking Trump as payback for past insults.

Democrats may find that the special investigator examines the intelligence leaks as a criminal activity. The unmasking of American citizens and subsequent leaking of that information may be a lane Mueller travels. If he does, then the left will rue the day they sought a special prosecutor. The Deep State's opposition may have to contend with a more rapid replacement of Obama appointees by those from Trump as a result.

The Trump administration is new and learning the ways of Washington. Administration operatives have yet to learn how to control the narrative. The disruptive forces behind Trump depend upon his skills to enact the changes they seek. Trump ultimately makes most decisions.

On Friday, Trump leaves for his first foreign trip to the Middle East and Europe. While he is away, his political enemies will be laying more bombs in his path. This appointment may be one more diversion to limit his concentration.

Howard J. WarnerSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/the_special_prosecutor_democrats_be_careful_what_you_wish_for.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

To avoid confrontation, all the politicians
from the mainstream political parties and all mainstream media are
going along with the myth of victimization. The problem is that this is
only fueling more violence, more terrorism and more fantasies of
victimization.

They are not the victims of any racist system -- it does not exist -- but they are the victims of an ideology of victimization, which claims that they are discriminated against because of race and religion.

Victimization is an excuse offered by the state, by most politicians (right and left) and by the mainstream media.

To avoid confrontation, all the politicians from the mainstream
political parties and all mainstream media are going along with the myth
of victimization. The problem is that this is only fueling more
violence, more terrorism and more fantasies of victimization.

French sociological research seems to have no new books, articles or
ideas about French Muslim radicalization. It is not hard to see why: the
few scholars tempted to wander off the beaten path ("terrorists are
victims of society, and suffering from racism" and so on) are afraid to
be called unpleasant names. In addition, many sociologists share the
same Marxist ideology that attributes violent behavior to discrimination
and poverty. If some heretics try to explain that terrorists are not
automatically victims (of society, of white French males, of whatever) a
pack of hounds of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars start baying to lynch
them as racists, Islamophobes and bigots.

After the November 2015, terrorist attacks in Paris, Alain Fuchs,
president of France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS),
launched a call for a new project to understand some of the "factors of
radicalization" in France.

The project
that emerged, "Youth and Radicalism: Religious and Political Factors",
by Olivier Galland and Anne Muxel, was thorough. Their survey is based
mainly on a poll conducted by Opinion Way of 7,000 high school students,
and was followed by a second "poll" of 1,800 young people (14 to 16
years old). The next phase will apparently include individual and group
interviews with young secondary-school students.

Galland and Muxel do not say that their survey is "representative" of all
French youth. Muslims high school students are over-represented in the
polls, in order to understand what is at stake in this segment of the
population.

Their proposal, however, is heretical: it means there is a problem with Muslims.

The preliminary results of this vast study were released at a press
conference on March 20. To the question in the study: What are the main
factors of radicalization? The answer was: religion.

"We can not deny the 'religion effect'. Among young
Muslims, the religion effect is three times more important than in
non-Muslim groups. Four percent of youths of all denominations defend an
absolutist vision of religion and apparently adhere to radical ideas;
this figure is 12% among young Muslims in our sample. They defend an
absolutist view of religion -- believing both that there is 'one true
religion' and that religion explains the creation of the world better
than science."

What about the usual explanations of lack of economic integration, fear of being on welfare, social exclusion and so on?

"A purely economic explanation appears not to be
validated. The idea of ​​a 'sacrificed generation', tempted by
radicalism, is confronted with the feeling of a relatively good
integration of these populations. [Young Muslims] appear neither more
nor less confident in their future than all other French youths; they
believe in their ability to pursue studies after the baccalaureat and to
find a satisfactory job."

These young Muslims recognize that they are not suffering from racism
or discrimination. But at the same time, many of them say they "feel"
discriminated against anyway. They are not the victims of any racist
system -- it does not exist -- but they are the victims of an ideology of victimization, which claims that they are discriminated against because of race and religion.

"The feeling of being discriminated against is twice as
strong in our sample especially among young people of Muslim faith or of
foreign origin. To explain the adherence [of young Muslims] to
radicalism, we must consider that religious factors are combining with
identity issues, and mixing themselves with feelings of victimization
and discrimination".

If Islam is an engine of radicalization, the second powerful engine
of radicalization is this dominant ideology of victimization.

"Young Muslims who feel discriminated against adhere more
often to radical ideas than those who do not feel discriminated
against."

These preliminary results are more than worrying. Against all
sociological evidence, social origin and academic level do not outweigh
the effect of religious affiliation. In other words, regardless of a
young Muslim's performance at school and his parents' profession, he is
four times more likely than a young Christian to adhere to radical
ideas.

"This strength of the effect of Islam is perhaps the most surprising teaching of this study," points
out Olivier Galland. "This is confirmed in school by school statistics.
Whatever their sociology, Muslim youths have an identical propensity to
become a radical."

This study is not the first to bring to light the process of the
radicalization of young Muslims in France. It is, however, the first to
connect radicalization and the ideology of victimization. Victimization
is an excuse offered by the state, by most politicians (right and left)
and by the mainstream media. Moreover, not only does the policy of
blaming victimization fail to be of any help, but the excuse of
victimization is actually fueling terrorism. When, on February 17, 2017,
French President François Hollande rushed to visit
Théo, a 22-year-old youth who claimed that the police sodomized him
with a baton during a confrontation with drug dealers -- it appeared
later that Theo was not so sure
of his accusations against the police. The presidential visit was not
helpful. The meeting between President Hollande and Theo sparked three
weeks of riots in the suburbs of Paris.

When Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, states that he is
in favor of "positive discrimination" (a €15,000 grant of public money
for any company that hires a youth from the suburbs), he is encouraging
future jihadists to represent themselves as victims.

When
Emmanuel Macron, the new president of France, states that he is in
favor of "positive discrimination", he is encouraging future jihadists
to represent themselves as victims. (Image source: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
Images)

France has Europe's largest Muslim community, largest Jewish
community, largest Chinese community, and largest Armenian community.
The French integration model worked for all those groups except one. A
growing percentage of Muslims in France are not accepting the rules that
everyone else has accepted. To avoid confrontation, all the politicians
from the mainstream political parties and all mainstream media are
going along with the myth of victimization. The problem is that this is
only fueling more violence, more terrorism and more fantasies of
victimization.

Yves Mamou, author and journalist, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10134/france-islamic-victimization Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Politicians and journalists -- by speaking at Islamist
conferences, or treating the Muslim community as a homogenous bloc
represented by self-appointed groups such as MAS or ICNA -- actually
serve to legitimize extremist Islamist leadership.

Islamists, forming inherently
political movements, insist to policy-makers and the media that Islam
is homogenous and that their Islamist organizations speak on behalf of
all Muslims, despite their clear lack of any mandate.

Politicians and journalists -- by speaking at Islamist
conferences, or treating the Muslim community as a homogenous bloc
represented by self-appointed groups such as MAS or ICNA -- actually
serve to legitimize extremist Islamist leadership.

Now it falls to national and state governments to stop working
with Islamists, and to support genuinely moderate Muslims instead.

Last month, Keith Ellison's name disappeared from a list of speakers
at one of the largest conferences in the Muslim calendar. The annual
event, which took place in Baltimore from April 14-16, was organized by
the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Muslim American
Society (MAS).

April's conference was no different.
Speakers included Siraj Wahhaj, an imam who addresses Muslim events
across the country every week, and is a former advisory board member of
the Council on American Islamic Relations. Wahhaj has preached:

"I don't believe any of you are homosexual. This is a
disease of this society. ... you know what the punishment is, if a man
is found with another man? The Prophet Mohammad said the one who does it
and the one to whom it is done to, kill them both."

Elsewhere, Wahhaj cites the death penalty for adultery, advocates chopping off the hands of thieves, and tells Muslims:

"Take not into your intimacy those outside of your race.
They will not fail to corrupt you. Don't you know our children are
surrounded by kafirs [disbelievers]. I'm telling you, making the hearts of our children corrupt, dirty, foul."

Other listed speakers included Abdul Nasir Jangda, who advocates sex-slavery and gives husbands permission to rape their wives; Suleiman Hani, who claims
that "Freedom of speech is a facade" used to stifle "objective
discussion" of the "Holocaust and Jews"; Mohammad Elshinawy, who claims
that women who fail to wear the hijab will contract breast cancer; and
Yasir Qadhi, whose violent homophobia was recently the subject of an investigative report by The Times.

Such extremism is not confined to the speakers. The organizing
bodies, MAS and ICNA, are not ordinary Muslim organizations, but
Islamist groups with long-standing ties to extremism at home and abroad.
Senior MAS-ICNA official Ahmed Taha, the organizer of the December
conference, is a strident anti-Semite. He published a text on social media that states, "O Muslim, O servant of God. There is a Jew behind me, come kill him."

MAS was founded in 1993 by operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, while ICNA has identified itself as an American front for Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), a South Asian Islamist group that Bangladeshi officials have linked to terrorism. One of the other listed speakers at the ICNA-MAS conference was, in fact, Yusuf Islahi, a member of the Central Advisory Council of the Indian branch of Jamaat-e-Islami. According to the academic Irfan Ahmad, Islahi claims that Jews were behind the 9/11 attacks, as part of a conspiracy to defame Islam.

As America finds itself increasingly exposed to the homegrown
Islamist terror that has, in recent years, increasingly gripped Western
Europe, politicians and law enforcement are starting to ask how Muslim
communities have come to be represented by such extremist groups.

Part of the answer lies in the make-up of Islam. Sunni Islam has no
organized clergy. There is no equivalent of a Pope. Instead, Islam is
divided into dozens of fractious political and religious sects, which no
single person or organization can represent. But Islamists, forming
inherently political movements, insist to policy-makers and the media
that Islam is homogenous and that their Islamist organizations speak on
behalf of all Muslims, despite their clear lack of any mandate.

Non-Muslims either do not know any better, or else are seeking votes.
Neither reason helps anyone but the extremists. Politicians and
journalists -- by speaking at Islamist conferences, or treating the
Muslim community as a homogenous bloc represented by self-appointed
groups such as MAS or ICNA -- actually serve to legitimize extremist
Islamist leadership.

Ellison made a sensible choice to not attend the ICNA-MAS conference.
It is a decision that can only help his political ambitions. Allegations of anti-Semitism
made against Ellison during the DNC chairmanship race, whether
warranted or not, would likely not be put to bed by standing on a stage
next to such preachers.

By withdrawing from the ICNA-MAS conference, as DNC vice-chairman,
Ellison also avoided lasting harm to the Democratic Party. This is
progress. Now it falls to national and state governments to stop working
with Islamists, and to support genuinely moderate Muslims instead.

DNC
vice-chairman Keith Ellison's name disappeared from a list of speakers
at one of the largest conferences in the Muslim calendar, after reports
about extreme clerics sharing the stage. (Image source: Alex Wong/Getty
Images)

Samuel Westropis the Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10374/mas-icna-conference Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Bay Area Democrat seeks a safe space for Stalinists.

Bay Area Democrat Rob Bonta has authored AB 22, which repeals part of a law allowing state employees to be fired for being members of the Communist Party. Bonta, 44, earned his JD at Yale but like the old-line establishment media he betrays total ignorance of the Communist Party and why the state should never hire or retain any Communist Party members.

American Communists were “volunteer members of a militarized colonial service, pledged to carry out the decisions of our supreme rulers resident at Moscow anywhere in the world but particularly in the land we were colonizing for Communism, the United States.” That was Ben Gitlow, Communist Party candidate for vice-president in 1924 and 1928. The Soviets established the Communist International, the Comintern, to manage their parties in other countries.

Party leaders such as William Z. Foster authored books such as Toward Soviet America, but the CPUSA never caught on with American voters. Many Party members bailed out after Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939. Others left after Stalin swung the USSR back to its traditional anti-Semitism in the late 1940s, and others after the Khrushchev revelations of 1956. It took a special kind of person to join the Party after that, but some were up to the task.

Few African Americans joined an overwhelmingly white party that represented an all-white foreign dictatorship. That proved no impediment to Angela Davis, who joined the CPUSA and at UCLA duly gained her first teaching job, which she retained despite attempts to fire her for her Party ties.

Davis left UCLA in 1970 and gained fame for supporting violent convicts such as Black Panther George Jackson, who killed a guard at Soledad Prison. Davis supplied the weapons for a courthouse gun battle in which a judge’s head was blown off. That case made her a national figure and in 1979 Davis won the International Lenin Peace Prize.

In 1980 and 1984 Angela Davis was the vice-presidential candidate of the Communist Party USA, on the bottom of the ticket under white Stalinist Gus Hall. Communists Davis and Hall twice lost to Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but serving as the candidate of a hostile foreign power did not prevent Davis from becoming professor of the history of consciousness and feminist studies, two non-disciplines, at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Assemblyman Bonta did not mention Davis’ case, nor that of Bert Corona, who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and dropped out of USC to become a professional Party agitator, what would now be called an “organizer.” The violence-prone Corona had no college degree and was completely unqualified for a job at Cal State LA, which hired him anyway.

Corona founded Hermandad Mexicana and bilked the state department of education out of $7 million. When investigators discovered the scandal, state education boss Delaine Eastin, another Bay Area Democrat, demoted the whistleblowers and kept the money flowing. The verbose Eastin is now running for governor of California, hoping that nobody remembers the rip-off or knew about it in the first place.

As the record shows, even the most high-profile Communist Party members, representatives of hostile foreign governments, can easily secure and retain high-paying jobs with the state of California. Rob Bonta wants that to continue, but he’s unclear whether members of some National Socialist party, Ku Kluckers and such should be able to get and keep state jobs without fear of dismissal. His bill provides a safe space only for Communist Party members.

Bonta was born in the Philippines, an “Asian Pacific Islander” in California’s politically correct caste system. He claims his intent is only to change the “McCarthyite, paranoid” intent of the current law, protect people’s rights, and align California with the Constitution. In all likelihood, Bonta intends his commie caper to establish his leftist credentials and prove that all Asians are not anti-Communists like so many of the Vietnamese in Orange County.

Assemblyman Bonta, who claims dedication to Constitutional rights, has not made it clear whether the denial of Nguyen’s free-speech rights disturbs him. For her part, Nguyen is pushing back at Bonta’s bill.

The bill is also an insult to anybody who knows anything about Communism and its history. For that reason alone, the odds are strong that state Democrats will pass Bonta’s Communist protection act and recurring governor Jerry Brown will gladly sign the measure. It’s who they are.

-- we are facing an intent to subvert the electoral will of the American people

Are you aware that we are facing a political and cultural tragedy right now? The Democratic Party, one of two great parties of the USA, has been co-opted by the communist ideologues, the power-mad neo-Marxists, in our political establishment. They can call it liberalism or social justice or togetherness, but it is my considered judgment that, without exaggeration, we are facing an intent to subvert the electoral will of the American people.

Based only on "unnamed sources," the Washington Post, NY Times, and CNN have accused President Donald Trump of sharing top-secret information with Russian officials. Imagine: this is "news" without any named source, without even a whistleblower ready to risk his job for the country. This is a mainstream media cause célèbre, even though CNN wrote online, "The President did not directly reveal the source of the information, but intelligence officials told CNN that there is concern that Russia will be able to figure out the highly sensitive source." Without accountability, and only the most limited information, the left-wing press is lambasting Trump. This trash is being published as "news" – i.e., as if it were fact. And this is being done with the tacit approval of the Democratic Party leadership. This is all part of the Democrat narrative that Trump is a Russian mole occupying the Oval Office.

How did we get to this point, where the hissing vipers have come out from under their rocks to poison the body politic? While we could go back to Eugene V. Debs, the socialist candidate for president at the beginning of the 20th century, or even before him to "Big Bill" Haywood and the International Workers of the World (IWW), the modern threat began to reveal itself in the 1960s. David Horowitz, in his collection of articles in the Black Book of the American Left, Vol. 7, sees a direct line between the Henry Wallace candidacy and the politics of the 1960s. But the important understanding we need to draw is that "direct line" is a line whereby the extreme left of the Democratic Party has moved from being rejected (1948 faction led by Henry Wallace) to becoming the center of the Democratic Party.

The success in drawing the Democrats leftward was the ability of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to unite youthful opposition to the Vietnam War with the urgent push for desegregation and "freedom" by the civil rights movement. While the civil rights movement was divided between the middle-class, church-going, nonviolent program of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Ralph Abernethy; and Andrew Young and the Black Power advocates like Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, who espoused violence in varying degrees, both factions were able to agree in their anti-war stance. If SDS could be characterized as the brains of this trinity of rebels, King's organization could be considered the idealists, and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), led by Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers, could be considered the gangster-lite aggression. Thus, intellect, idealism, and aggression or thuggery became fused to create a new neo-fascistic trend. Love of country played second fiddle to "needed change."

To characterize the trend as neo-fascistic is in no way in opposition to seeing that trend as communistic. A common anti-democratic thread runs through both fascism and communism. Although fascists are hyper-nationalistic or chauvinistic in one sense, they have internationalist ambitions as shown in their urge to conquer. Economic and political imperialism is central to their modus operandi. Further, government for fascists does not exist to facilitate competition, nor even to merely regulate some of the negative fallout that inevitably occurs as business grows. Rather, fascism affirms tight political control over the economic sphere even if it does not take ownership of major industries or of all commercial dealings, as did the USSR under Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong in the PRC.

Communism sees itself as expanding two ways. It is moved forward by historical necessity whereby the dialectic of history is moving towards proletarian ownership of the means of production. The historical dialectic ends in a violent revolutionary struggle where the bourgeoisie are overthrown forever. But communists are also willing to expand via military aggressions and conquest against nation-states, as we saw in Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, and Eastern Europe. Although there are nuanced differences, both fascism and communism are opposed to laissez-faire capitalism, political liberty, constitutionalism, federalism, any idea of checks and balances, competition, and religion espousing the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Love and forgiveness, humility, and righteousness as central tenets of Judeo-Christian values are rejected as stultifying or bourgeois.

Thus, distinctions blur as the movement into the center of power accelerates. Fascistic communism or communistic fascism are both appropriate labels for the new thrust we have seen from the late sixties and early seventies to the present. The Democratic Party increasingly expresses this evil marriage.

The virulent response to President Trump is a manifestation of the poisonous life lodging under the rocks. The vipers have emerged as the Black Lives Matter movement; so-called student riots against Trump; race and criminal riots in the streets of Ferguson, Baltimore, Dallas, and other cities; gallons of vitriol and ridicule poured out by late-night TV "comedians"; literal threats against the persons and lives of conservative pro-Trump speakers at our colleges and universities, and attacks mobilizing against Israel in a thuggish manner by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on our campuses. All of these are developments aimed at destroying our legal, social, and economic order.

At the same time, the Democratic Party is sending out a message of "understanding" of the concerns that have "caused" these outrages. They will say of the rioters and provocateurs that you are not handling your grievances in the most constructive way possible, but they will, at the same time, emphasize that their destructive tendencies are oh, so understandable. The growing menace to the peace and well-being of society is consistently downplayed by Democratic Party spokesmen, from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to "Chuckie" Schumer to Dick Durbin to Debbie Schultz, etc., etc. Instead of reprimands and rebukes and calls for respect for our democratic institutions, we see the alliance of intellect, idealism, and aggression that was birthed in the 1960s. No longer are the street thugs and anti-Americans rioting against the Democratic Party, as they did at the 1968 Democratic Convention that nominated Hubert Humphrey to run for office. Now the goals of the rabble are manifesting with the blessing of Democrat leadership that has bought into the fascistic and communist program.

Further, look at the reporting of these events on ABC, CBS, NBC, and other major outlets. When there is a fire or an explosion, the news anchors feel comfortable expressing their horror at the scene, at the thought of property destroyed and persons injured or killed. But the civil disturbances by the menacing mobs are reported matter-of-factly, without a sense of horror or outrage about property losses or personal injury or death. The anchors adopt serious facial expressions but proceed in a matter-of-fact way. This is all a part of "not taking sides," but in fact, it means taking a side against law and order, against Trump, against Israel, against capitalism, against our system of government.

The press is participating in this anti-American carnage by issuing a spate of "fake news," hyperbole regarding Trump's alleged mistakes or wrongdoings, stories treated as credible against the present duly elected administration even though said stories originate from "unnamed sources," and other stories like collusion with the Russians to fix an election that was not fixed. They go on and on, pounding away at the same non-story and desirous of portraying Trump as a traitor from the outset of his candidacy. This is the daily portrayal by Democrats and the pro-Democrat media despite there being no evidence, and even no specific wrongdoing stated.

The Democratic Party is not only soft on this unrest, but encouraging the unrest and the lying, hyperventilating, and false reporting. It is morally bankrupt. With its alliance against constitutional values, federalism, free markets, freedom of property and liberty for the individual, it has crossed an invisible line from supporting America to being an enemy of America.

E. Jeffrey LudwigSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/americas_betrayal_by_the_democratic_party.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

President Trump must close Iran’s illegal election sites.

Iranian voters go to the polls on Friday to select a new president from a list of the regime faithful chosen for them by the Supreme Leader and his aptly-named Guardians Council.

Many opposition groups, both inside Iran and in exile, have called for a boycott on these sham elections, which are a masquerade of democracy.

Regime supporters whined when the leftist government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shut down polling stations set up by the Islamic State of Iran’s embassy in Toronto, arguing that Western governments should want more voting by Iranians, not less.

But these elections are as free as those held by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, or by Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the 1980s. Stalin’s famous dictum – it’s not the people who vote who count, it’s the people who count the votes – is nowhere more true today than in Islamic Iran.

And while incumbent president Hassan Rouhani is trying to position himself as an election-eve convert to moderate policies, his supporters cannot name a single political prisoner who owes his or her freedom to Rouhani’s intervention, or to a single political execution Rouhani helped to block.

But the elections are important to Ayatollah Khamenei. The so-called “Supreme Leader” of the Islamist Iran has repeatedly called on citizens to vote on Friday, reasoning that a high turnout will “send a message” to regime foes in Israel and the United States.

It’s an outrage that U.S. taxpayers are paying to spread the Ayatollah’s anti-U.S. propaganda, but it’s true. That and many similar “news” stories touting the virtues of Iran’s [s]elections have been broadcast by the Persian service of VOA and Radio Farda, run by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Put simply, a vote on Friday is not a vote for moderation or freedom, or even the better of bad choices: it is a vote of support for the Islamic terror regime in Tehran.

As the pro-bono president of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, I have joined forces with the Islamic State of Iran Crime Research Center and hundreds of others in petitioning the White House to shut down the 56 illegal polling places the Iranian regime authorities say they want to set up across the United States on Friday.

Among them are unknown locations in Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michican, and Seattle, Washington, where the Islamic regime’s embassy plans to bus in would-be voters from across the border in Canada. (I can hear the questions from our Customs and Border Control agents: and you want to come to the United States to do what?)

We expect the regime to update its dedicated website on the elections with actual addresses at the last minute, as has been their practice in previous years. Their goal in this hide and seek is to avoid federal prosecution, and to prevent protest by regime opponents.

There are other reasons why freedom-loving Iranians and ordinary Americans should join us in calling on the Trump administration to shut down these election sites: they violate a whole gamut of U.S. laws.

As part of the 1981 Algiers Accord that ended the 444-day ordeal of U.S. diplomats held hostage by Tehran, the Iranian regime is allowed to maintain two diplomatic facilities in the United States: a Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, and an Interests section in Washington, DC, currently under the protection of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

But the accord also forbids those diplomats from traveling beyond a 25 mile radius from New York or Washington, DC, without a specific permit from the Department of State.

Iranian regime election law, however, requires that regime officials actually man the polling stations and certify the balloting. If any Iranian diplomats are caught traveling beyond the 25-mile limit without a permit, they should be immediately jailed and ultimately declared Persona Non-Grata.

Beyond that, U.S. sanctions under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act and other authorities prohibit U.S. citizens from conducting business or performing services for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Treasury Department can freeze the assets of violators under a simple order that is not subject to judicial review.

That means that any U.S. university, hotel, business, or private person entering into a contractual relationship to provide facilities to be used as polling places for the Iranian “election” on Friday does so at their peril. They have far more to lose than just the thirty pieces of silver they took as rent from the regime.

Pro-Tehran lobbyists continue to populate the swamps in Washington, DC.

One such group, calling itself the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian-Americans (PAAIA), has been trying to organize opposition to the Trump Executive Orders on immigration, and filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, DC, seeking to stay their implementation.

PAAIA leaders are coming to Washington, DC, this coming Monday for meetings with Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Others, such as the National Iranian American Council, wildly successful under the Obama administration, have seen their influence shrivel to the size of one peanut under Trump.

Like millions of ordinary Americans who finally woke up and voted last November because they saw the real possibility that the country they grew up in would be destroyed, pro-freedom Iranian-Americans generally abhor politics. They rarely act in a well-organized fashion. Even protests against Ahmadinejad’s visits to the United Nations in New York rarely attracted more than a few thousand demonstrators, and most of those were paid and bused in by the Islamist Marxist Mujahedin-e Khalq, as I revealed in these pages over a decade ago.

That is why the grass roots support from Iranian-Americans to shut down these sham elections is so important.

Ayatollah Khomeini famously said during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, “America can do nothing.”

By that he meant, we can spit in their face, we can stomp on their flag and defy them on their own territory, and they won’t dare to oppose us.

The Islamic state of Iran’s current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, loves to repeat Khomeini’s slogan. This is a terrific opportunity not just to prove the ayatollahs wrong, but to show them that America remains a beacon of freedom that ultimately will shine brighter than their dark regime inside Iran itself.

Kenneth R. TimmermanSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266742/iran-election-farce-kenneth-r-timmerman Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Combined
with other excesses such as FBAR and FATCA – whereby Americans living
abroad must annually report the numbers and holdings of all their
financial accounts to the IRS – the current regime is indefensible.

"A territorial tax system – what is that?"

So inquired a White House reporter of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as he outlined President Trump's tax reform proposal.

The question itself, and the baffled tone in which it was delivered, reveals much about why Americans who rely on news media for analysis of economic matters, and tax policy in particular, remain so benighted.

In particular, American citizens, their families, business associates, and various other "U.S. persons" seem blithely unaware of the power claimed over them by the Internal Revenue Service.

To wit, if you are an American, or married to one, or in certain sorts of business with one, the IRS demands that you file and pay taxes to the IRS every year, even if you have never set foot in the United States.

This is almost never discussed in the mainstream media, presumably because politicians, journalists, and various financial talking heads simply do not understand the issue. In a country where a majority of citizens do not hold passports, perhaps this is to be expected.

But the fact remains that Americans who move abroad, whether they are leaving in a huff because their preferred candidate lost an election or simply emigrating for work or family, must still file and pay U.S. income taxes as though they had never left.

Specifically, the IRS requires a complete U.S. federal tax filing, along with a copy of the tax return filed in the country of residence so the two can be compared. If it is found that the filer would have paid more in tax under the American system, the taxpayer is expected to send the difference to the U.S. Treasury – again, even if that person has never been to the United States.

Beyond the self-evident taxation without representation inherent in such a regime, the crushing complexity of the U.S. tax code makes compliance difficult and expensive.

It is not uncommon for Americans abroad to send a few pages and a check to the tax authority of the country in which they reside and then have to spend thousands of dollars to process and send a 50-page return back to the United States, even if they owe nothing further.

This is applicable to more than 7 million Americans who live in other countries, along with their spouses and various other associates and relations. These people are acutely aware of the injustice and inconvenience of this system.

And yet you can read financial newspapers and watch business programs until your eyes fall out and hear nary a word about it.

The flummoxed query posed to Mnuchin pertained to Trump's plan to reform the corporate tax system, such that American companies doing business abroad will be taxed only on their U.S. operations. This would be a worthwhile change and, pace the intrepid reporter who seemed buffaloed by the concept, would bring the United States in line with almost every other nation in the world.

But, as usual, there has been no discussion of whether the individual American abroad will be liberated from the worldwide clutches of the IRS. It is all well and good to offer relief to corporations – indeed, for at least the past three presidential cycles, Republican candidates have phonetically repeated that $1 trillion will be "repatriated" by such a reform – but what about an employee of one of those companies stationed overseas? Or, for that matter, what about someone who has nothing to do with America or its corporations, with the exception of having been born there, or having a spouse or parent who was?

Currently, the only escape for Americans living abroad is to renounce their citizenship, and even that requires hefty fees and payment of an "exit tax" – essentially a capital gains tax on all assets above a certain threshold. Moreover, the IRS reserves the right to scrutinize former citizens' taxes for years to come, and those deemed to have renounced for tax reasons are technically prohibited from entering the United States.

A few years ago, the U.S. Treasury Department began publishing quarterly lists of Americans who renounced their citizenship (and every three months brings a new record high number of renunciations), presumably to shame those people.

Rather, the shame is on a government that treats it citizens as property, demanding money from livelihoods and toil that take place in other nations.

No other country in the world subjects its citizens to this sort of worldwide taxation, with the exception of Eritrea. But the United States actually gets away with it.

Combined with other excesses such as FBAR and FATCA – whereby Americans living abroad must annually report the numbers and holdings of all their financial accounts to the IRS – the current regime is indefensible.

At the moment, expatriates of Russia, North Korea, and the People's Republic of China enjoy greater economic freedom than Americans living abroad. This is one of those appalling, counterintuitive facts where, upon hearing it, one squints and rationalizes and inwardly insists that it must not be true. And yet it is.

As the adage goes, Americans once rioted because the British put a tax on their breakfast drink – and it wasn't even coffee.

A tax reform worthy of America's legacy of freedom will liberate its citizens all over the world.

Theo Caldwell is a dual American-Canadian citizen living in Toronto. He has been a member of the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, and the Kansas City Board of Trade. Contact him attheo@theocaldwell.com.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/the_tax_reform_no_one_talks_about.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.